Two months ago the CFE (electric utility) transformer that serves our zone in Ajijic blew up one night and took about 12 hours to replace.

The new one did not seem to have the same capacity and we began to have lower than acceptable “charge” in the street lines. Without this, our solar system was unable to function properly and all the energy we produced was being sent into the ground and wasted!

Repeated calls and visits to the CFE resulted in a lot of frustration. And repeated attempts to contact the man who sold me the system back in 2009 met with no success.

So I called Jsun Mills of eSun energy to see if he could do something for me.

His technicians discovered that my system was not designed to adapt to Mexico’s specifications. After they contacted the U.S. distributor/manufacturer, it became clear that my five-year-old system was essentially useless unless the CFE were to return the power in the street to the previous levels (above 213V).

In an act of incredible goodwill toward me (a man who did not buy his system from eSun Energy), Jsun agreed to replace my unit with a new one that works perfectly for Ajijic. He charged me nothing, not even for the installation.

Please write and tell me if you know of any business person who would pick up the service end of a contract he had nothing to do with! Jsun told me that he did not want anyone in his service area to have a bad experience with solar power, since all bad press would negatively affect him one way or another. He’s right, already I had a Facebook comment from someone who wondered if the CFE would provide adequate infrastructure that made such a large investment as putting in solar worthwhile. The answer is CFE on their own perhaps can’t, but Jsun will take care of you.

Hats off to Jsun Mills. He’s the businessman of the year in my book and should receive your support!

Tom Thompson

Dear Sir,

I was headed to the Lake Chapala Society to pick up some charity ticket when I noticed that the block of 16 de Septiembre between Nicolas Bravo and M. Blanco suddenly had no parking available!

A stretch of mini boulders had been placed in the public street, lining practically the entire block. At first I thought the calle had been made privado. Then I asked myself, could individual renters just block the public streets because they don’t want people parking on the block? Now I support placing protective concrete blocks around trees. But do we need to let folks construct a pathetic two square foot “faux flower container” in the public street? So my question to the city of Ajijic is: Can anyone just arbitrarily barricade the public street in front of his or her apartment? At the very least, it’s rather un-neighborly. What if everyone who lived in the Heart of Ajijic blocked off the public street? I thought the city wanted us to come support the restaurants and businesses? And if the city doesn’t want to allow parking, then just paint the curbs red! But really, remove the boulders and the crass flower container. The street looks pretty tacky.

C.E. Davis,

San Antonio Tlayacapan

Dear Sir,

In response to Ms. Phillips’ Letter to the Editor of last week criticizing Gloria Perales for the Carnival noise.

It is unkind and mean-spirited to criticize a woman who has only just been appointed to her position and who is going to work on the behalf of our non-Spanish speaking population. Certainly the Carnival slogan was chosen many months before Ms. Perales took the job.

Yes, Carnival is very loud and can be annoying because it goes so late. But who are we, Norteamericanos, to come to Mexico and criticize centuries-old customs? If we don’t like it, we should go to the beach for Carnival week, or perhaps we should not come to Mexico at all.

I take it that the recent approved category of femicide refers to the U.N. Protocol addressing the traditional Latin American custom of somehow dismissing the murder of female victims as a relatively minor offense (to the extent that some sentences got “lost”).

Laudable though the addition of femicide is in the criminal code, homicide remains nonspecific about victim gender. Homicide is not restricted to male victims – that would be ‘homocide’. So does a criminal who murders a woman get to choose homicide or femicide depending on which is less harsh? Or are they the same?